I have come to the conclusion after this last week, especially as I look back at that last year and forward at the directions we are going, that I may not make noticeable progress spiritually or financially for the foreseeable future.
I had two of the hardest years of my life while I was serving as Elder’s Quorum President. The calling was not the thing that made them the hardest although it was a weight. The thing that made them the hardest was carrying the family while Laura went through successive pregnancies. Since being released nine months ago I have changed jobs three times and this year already ranks as more difficult than either of the two while I was serving in that capacity.
Looking forward I see the opportunity for this self-employment to be very lucrative. It really looks like I should be able to very comfortably provide for our needs. The challenge is that I don’t know how quickly we will build the user-base sufficient to live comfortably. I can say that I really enjoy having a project that I control. I have run into plenty of glitches and had to learn some new things to solve some unexpected technical problems, but I thrive in that environment – unlike being in a position where I have to wait on others either for direction, approval, or implementation. I would love to see this take off so that within two months we already had 1500 users and sufficient income to make ends meet but at this point I am mentally braced for it to take much longer than that to get financially secured again.
Spiritually I see how much of a headwind we are facing with Laura drained after years of pre-nursery aged children. We have at least 10 more months of that with Ezra and Noah is not staying in nursery by himself yet. Because of those things I have determined to take that load from Laura and be the one to take care of those two even if it means going home more weeks than not. By doing so I hope that Laura will regain some spiritual strength. I am not worried about my testimony but I may very well appear less-active to the objective observer. If I continue daily scripture study, daily prayer, and weekly temple attendance I feel that I will be able to weather the drought but I know that I will miss the sociality of taking a more active part in the ward community but right now I think Laura needs that strength even more than I do.
In the interest of record keeping I should note that I worked for three hours yesterday bringing my total to 39 hours and $120 so far.
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